pparaska

Thanks Jon. Those "metal adjustment-thing-you-tighten-the-harness-with bar" things look to be several inches long. I only have 3/4" between the bar and the seat back. Damn, time to do some welding!

I know this may not be the most popular view, but my thought is, the main advantage to this endeavor is high power to weight ratio. By the time the 280Z was going out of production, it weighed 300 to 400 lbs more than the first 240Zs. Go with a rustless (I know, tough to find) or subframed/rollbarred 240Z and your several hundred lbs lighter, and that much faster.

And with that thought, I have a little test I want to run. It seems that if I'm REAL lucky, I'd be making over 380 hp at the flywheel. Those two Hemi Super Turbos flow 415 cfm each, good for 378hp, based on the relationship:x HP * 2.2 = Y cfm So I'm thinking that's about right. But what if I create a bit of back pressure by putting something on the ends of the muffler, like a resonator tip that's a bit restrictive. Any thoughts?

Dave, I'd agree. A typical 2.5" muffler won't handle enough flow to get much above 200-250 hp. I went with two huge Hemi Super Turbos to fight flow restrictions as much as possible, hoping all that muffler volume would help bring the noise down. Boy, I was mistaken on that second part. Too loud for my taste, but my Harley riding neighbors think it sounds great and not too loud . Someone on HybridZ had obtained a full-up Dynomax catalog that had flow ratings (cfm) for a certain amount of pressure for each muffler. Who was that? Tom Scala?

Beautiful looking install! What color with the car be?

Just and FYI, but I have coilovers, and 8" springs at that that put the spring bottom up high on the strut to fit 17x9's on the rear. Check out my site and the "wheels & tires" page for details. I've heard that 16x8s with 235s will fit a Z without coilovers/flares, but use the search button on this forum and you should be able to find an answer.

I get so many car magazines, I don't know where I read this lately, and no, I don't believe everything I read, but here's a theory I've seen presented: 1) Smaller combustion chamber means more quench area on head. This seems better for swirl, etc. Having a matched dished piston (one that matches the chamber footprint at the deck surface) like how the Trick flow twisted wedge pistons mate with the twisted wedge heads makes for a better way to get enough chamber volume for large stroke engines than using a flat top and larger chamber heads. 2) Heat transfer from the combustion chamber surfaces. Up to the point that you have detonation and/or pre-ignition, keeping the heat in the combustion chamber makes more torque (and hence power). This is simple Otto-cycle thermodynamics (highest efficiency with largest difference in combustion and intake temps). This is also supposedly one reason why newer OHV engines like the LS1 have higher specific power. In essence, less surface area to volume ratio (a sphere-ish chamber being optimal, considering flame propagation and flows as well) means less heat transfer and higher combustion/post-combustion temperatures and pressures, and more torque/power. The smaller closed chamber heads with "D"-dished of conforming dish like the TW piston/head have a less surface area than the larger open chamber/flat-top piston combo with the same volume. And heat transfer in the head is generally larger than the piston, since it's cooled with high coolant flow right near the chamber walls. All theory, and I probably got some stuff mixed up, but that's how I see it.

Al, that thing looks "nuclear proof"

Lockjaw, that's not going to piss me off at all. Except for the magazines (which don't want to piss off their advertisers), if you look on the net for REAL test data, the flowmasters are known to have less flow capability (all that really matters for max power) than many other mufflers. We all know they're not too quiet (except for the larger 50 or 70 series I guess.) I personally like the sound of the flowmasters, but wouldn't want them on my car as they're too loud for my tastes. The Dynomax Super Turbo has a really good mix of sound absorption, flow, low frequency output, and price, IMO. Borla is excellent too, but expensive. One thing to keep in mind is if you leave all the muffling until last in the system, it's going to be somewhat loud unless you put a restrictive muffler on it. A pre-muffler or resonator in the tunnel is a great way around this. I may someday hack my system up and put in resonators, as it's too loud for my tastes, even though it's a dual 2.5" system with the larger, longer Hemi Super Turbo mufflers.

Terry, I forgot to congratulate you on a great catch, sorry. Oh, and replace that stinking nylon tube with a braided one! Sometimes, some of us are very careful and screw up anyway . What happens if you let an engine sit for a 8 yrs after building it without ever running oil through the passages (pre-lubing it on the stand)? In my case, a tiny bit of water or caustic solution sat in the back of the cleaned oil galleys and over time created some flaky rust that washed down into the main (and then rod) bearings and trashed the bearings and scored the crank right after startup. But then during the rebuild, I got the opportunity to throw a more radical cam in the thing, port the heads, put in a gear drive, diamond oil scraper, etc. - so it wasn't ALL bad.

DAW, I like the way you think. When I put my R200 LSD diff in, I swapped a non-finned R200 cover onto it. But thinking back, I can't remember ever seeing a picture of an R200 finned cover that didn't have a few fins broken off at the bottom, like the one I got with my used LSD diff. Now I', thinking you've got a good idea for me. I can't use the bumped out custom brace that's out there for this swap, due to my exhaust routing. But if I just trimmed the bottom of the fins off the cover, I could have most of the fins still there (although it'd be good to have the lower parts there, since the fluid is at the mid/bottom of the cover). Thanks for that idea!

How about Toyota TERDCEL side mirrors? (Pics of how I did it later this week).

Hmm. That's what I was afraid of. I thing the metal clip will be hitting me in the back/top of the shoulders. I guess I could weld some plates onto the rollbar to put an eyebolt in.

Good lesson Terry. I NEVER crank up a new motor without first seeing oil pressue come up and oil coming out of all the pushrods/rockers, or cam squirter holes, etc.

Congrats on a great maiden voyage!

Welcome! When the halfshafts let loose, they can damage the control arm, the underside of the unibody, and take out the brake lines. A few have built halfshaft loops that attach to the control arm to capture the flailing halfshafts when the break. The other thing to consider is that the stub axles break and can cause the halfshaft to flail as well. The 280Z stub axles fit in the 240Z as a direct swap, but you need to use the 280Z companion flange as well, as it's a large splined shaft.

Yeah, I was going to write Hotrod to straighten them out. They said if the trans didn't puke, the rearend would - man, those 'merican only guys think anything made in Japan is weakly built.

I have a brand new set of all 4 (2 front, 2 rear) Hyundai Excel sidemarker lights for sale: http://www.hybridz.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=001511&p=

Guys, I have Corbeau A4 seats, and with mine in a comfortable position, the seat belt bar is about 3/4" behind the back of the seat back, but right in the middle, heightwise with the holes in the seat back. Is 3/4" of room between the seatback and the bar enough to us wrap-around shoulder belts, or is more needed? I'm thinking about Mike's M&R belts.

Sweet! Congrats! What heads? Lose the torker manifold though - they've been shown again and again to be not that good. THe latest HOTROD mag had a buildup of an old 360 Mopar that had one one it and a dual plane killed it at low AND high RPM

Well, some do it because they like the process as well as the result (i.e., hobby) - others just want to drive a fast HybridZ. Me, I'd have a hard time buying one, unless it was the caliber of SuperDan's car, and that was an incredible steal of a price too. But it sure is cheaper to buy one done or almost done. Sorry to see someone else lose their baby for much less than they put into $$wise building it!

Just for my education, would someone care to add a few columns across that list, for stock hp, hp with $1k mods, and hp with $3k mods? I'm thinking the RB25DET makes more sense if you want more that 200+hp - that's nothing these days, and in my opinion not worth the trouble of the conversion.

Maybe buy mandrel J bends of SS or AL and use those silicone sleeves with T-bolts here and there to tie it together? Welding would be better, but if you can plan it out, there might not need to be too many silicone sleeve joints. You could mock it up with mild steel mandrel bends first.

Cool Jamie - sounds a bit familiar - like Project Creep LOL

Yes, leave the metal sleeves in the M-bar. That's the only place on the entire Z that you must leave them in when putting in the garden-variety polyurethane bushings. You don't need to burn all the rubber out. If you heat (slowly) the M-bar "curl" around the bushing until the rubber starts to smoke and smolder, you can pull the center sleeve and rubber out with vise-grips, pliers, etc.